We're Still In The Game
by karkam25
Summary: They were both alone. They had no one but themselves. Until they had each other. Suddenly they realize that maybe they aren't as alone as they make themselves feel. Part 4 of the You'll Never Take Us Alive series.


We're Still in The Game

Wally made his way down the desolate streets of Gotham. For the past two years he had been on his own after he ran away from his home when he was eleven. And he had never been happier. Sure he missed his aunt and uncle, but he was finally free to be himself. Over the past few years he had mostly perfected his thieving skills, but every now and again, he still slipped up. Like now for instance.

As he passed a local fruit vender his right hand swapped an apple from its stack, but unfortunately, the vender caught sight of the move. "Hey! You have to pay for that, you little brat." With those words Wally took off down the street with the man following close behind. After spending so long by himself on the streets, he had become faster than normal thirteen year olds, so normally he didn't have issues losing a tail. But this man was incredibly fast so it took him longer to lose him.

As he made his way down an alleyway, he collided with another boy. The boy was probably a year or two younger then himself, and he was wearing some kind of black cloak. He had black hair and blue eyes, but what really caught Wally's attention was the boy's face. It was the same face he'd been seeing for years. The boy from his drawings. Wally stared up at the boy, who had already righted himself, with his mouth a gape.

The other boy looked around frantically, as if he too was being chased by something. He seemed to find what he was looking for, and he gripped Wally's arm and pulled him up. The black headed boy pulled him behind a dumpster, and put a hand over his mouth before he could say anything. They sat there for a few moments, then they heard the footsteps. Three where coming from the left, where the blue eyed boy had come from, and one set was coming from the right, where Wally had come from.

As soon as all the footsteps had faded, the boy once again pulled him, this time out from behind the dumpster. When he released his arm, he took a running start to a wall, ran up it, flipped and landed on the fire escape ladder on the opposite wall. When he pulled it down, he started his way up it. Then he turned to Wally with a face that clearly said, 'Are you coming or not?' Slowly coming out of his shock of finding the boy, and then of his display of skills, Wally followed him up the fire escape and onto the roof.

As soon as Wally's feet were on the roof, the boy took off running along the rooftops. The redheaded boy ran after him, not wanting to be left behind. The boy moved gracefully as if he belong up high, he moved as if he weren't almost four stories off the ground. Wally moved a lot less gracefully, but he kept up with him well enough. After about ten minutes of running they stopped on a roof across from an abandoned warehouse.

They made their way down the fire escape once again and made their way inside the warehouse. Wally was expecting a rundown old building inside, to match the outside. He was not, however, expecting to find a clean almost high-tech looking room. The far wall was completely covered by computer screens, there were tables all over the place piled with different kinds of devices. It looked more like some kind of hidden base more than somewhere a street kid would live.

The kid made his way over to some table with weird tech on it and started fiddling with it. Wally just stood awkwardly in the middle of the room having no idea what to do. Finally, after about fifteen minutes he cleared his throat. The boy looked up surprised as if he'd forgotten anyone else was here, which he probably had. "So, uh, thanks for the save back there." Wally said awkwardly. The boy didn't say anything just stared at him with a blank expression, which was a very disturbing look on a ten year olds face. "Anyway, um, I'm Wally and you are?" Still the boy stared.

Finally, the boy seemed to dismiss him and turned back to his work. Slightly put out Wally tried again, "What is this place?" This time the boy didn't even look at him and just a continued to work. Ok, so one more time then. "Where'd you learn to do that cool trick with the ladder?" The boy tensed, but other than that didn't react. With a sigh, Wally gave up asking question, because he was clearly not going to be getting anything form the kid.

Instead he made his way over to a nearby table, where he reached down to pick up one of the devices. Before his hand could make contact with it, though, something flew through the air and landed between his hand and the device. He quickly pulled his hand back and looked closer at the object. It was a knife. A throwing knife. He turned his gaze over to the boy, he didn't look like he had moved in the past few minutes, but the knife had to have come from him. Ok, so don't touch anything. Got it.

 **Line Break**

Dick didn't know why he brought the older boy back to his hide out. It just felt right. That's also why he dragged the boy behind the dumpster. Something told him that they hadn't run into each other by chance. The red headed boy, Wally apparently, was now just standing in the middle of the room again after he had thrown the knife at his hand. So he got the message then, at least he was smart.

"So, I'm going to go now. It was nice meeting you. I guess." Wally muttered as he turned to head to the door. Dick looked up panicked, he couldn't leave not now. He flipped over the table and jumped in front of the door before Wally managed to reach them. The green eyed boy looked confused but still tried to leave. So much for him being smart. Dick knew there was only one way to ensure that the other stayed, but he had never actually thought he would use it. But for some reason it didn't bother him as much as he thought it would.

' _You can't leave.'_ Dick said into his mind. Wally jumped at hearing a voice inside is head. _'And before you freak out, no you are not crazy.'_ Now Wally was staring at him with wide eyes, as if he couldn't believe what was happening, which was probably exactly it. Seeing as he would probably not be saying anything in the next few minutes, Dick decided to try to explain some. ' _I don't talk, so some pretty bad people tried to get me to by putting this device in my head that would make it possible to communicate with them with my mind. Didn't really go as planned when I still refused to talk to them. You're the first person I've talked to in two years.'_ He didn't really know why he was telling a complete stranger about that, but he just felt like it was the right thing to do.

Still looking very freaked out, Wally asked, "Ok, and why exactly can't I leave. If it's because you're worried I'll tell someone about you secret base, I promise that I won't. I swear." Wally looked so panicked that Dick was going to kill him that he almost wanted to laugh, but he held back, no need to freak the poor guy out anymore then he already was. Instead he just rolled his eyes.

' _I'm not going to kill you if that's what your worried about. You can't leave because I got this weird feeling that we didn't run into each other by chance. And that if you walk out those doors, you're not going to last much longer.'_ He saw Wally tense, but he wasn't sure whether it was because about the not meeting by chance or the not lasting much longer, part. Probably the latter. He watched curiously as the other boy pulled off his backpack and started to rummage through it until he pulled out an old worn sketch book.

Wally started flipping through the book, like he was looking for something. As he did so, he started talking, "Yeah, I get that feeling too. It might also have something to do fact that my sketch book is full of drawings of you, even though this is the first time I've ever seen you." Then he stopped on a page and hand the book to him.

He wearily took the book into his hands, then looked at the page. He almost dropped the book. His own face, in amazing detail, was staring back at him. He was on that page glowering at something. ' _How did you get this?'_

Wally shrugged and shook his head, "No idea, it started about two years ago, before I ran away. I just started drawing and wasn't paying attention to what it was. At first I didn't think much of it, at least not until about the third drawing of you. And when I did finally leave home I was trying to figure out where to go, but as soon as I saw your picture, I somehow knew that I need to go to Gotham. I've been here ever since."

Dick handed the sketch book back to him. ' _Well that settles it then, there is defiantly something going on here. So it looks like you'll be staying here from now on. In that case I guess you should know my name. Dick Grayson, at your service.'_ He gave a slight mocking bow at the last sentence, causing Wally to crack a smile, he could defiantly get used to this kid.

Returning the bow with one of his own, he said, "It's a pleasure to meet you, Dick. I'm Wally. Now one question, what is this place?" Wally looked around at all the technology once again. He wondered where a ten-year-old street kid could have possibly have gotten his hands on this much cool tech.

' _Those people I told you about, the one's that put the device into my head, they wanted me to become this super assassin. But I really didn't want to kill anyone, so about three months ago I escaped. After I got away from them I came here and set up this a base of sorts. I 'borrowed' all this tech from some 'generous' store fronts. I use them to keep track of what's happening around the city.'_ Dick said. _'Now what I would like to know is what where you doing in that alley that had you in such a rush?'_

Wally answered distractedly still amazed by the amount of tech, "I was running from fruit vender. He caught me trying to swipe and apple. What were you running from?" As he answered he wondered around and inspected some strange look object, being sure not to touch anything.

' _When you've spent the last two years being trained as an assassin and then suddenly take off out of the blue, the people training you tend not to take it very well and try to track you down.'_ Since it was obvious Wally was going to make a break for it again, Dick wondered back to his table and started fiddling with the objects there again. He'd only been away from the Court for three months and he couldn't be happier. For the first time since his parents died, he finally felt like his life was his again and not some toy his deranged great-grandfather could play around with. And now that Wally was here, maybe he would finally get the chance to be a kid again. Or at least, as much of a kid that a trained assassin acrobat could be.

Wally finally pulled his attention away from the tech he was investigating and wondered over to the table Dick was occupying. "Is that where you learned those wicked moves at? I've never seen someone move like that."

Dick glanced over at him in amusement, _'I learned some of it there, but before I ended up with them I grew up in a circus with my parents. We were trapeze artist, some of the best in the world. They died when I was eight. A mob boss named Tony Zocco cut the wires on the trapeze to get back at the Ring Master Pop Haley. That was the last time I ever talked to anyone until you. After that I was sent to the Gotham City Juvenile Detention Center because all the orphanages were full or something like that. About four months into my stay there was an explosion right beside my cell and these weird guys in bird suits showed up and took me away. When I woke up I was in the tiny room that smelled awful chained to a wall. Then I was introduced to my Great-grandfather William Cobb who was way to young looking to be my great-grandfather, but because of this serum they use he stopped aging and he couldn't be killed. After that he told me my birthright was to become a Talon for the Court of Owls. The next two years was basically constant torture because I refused to kill anyone. The day I was supposed to get the serum, I stabbed Cobb in the neck and hightailed it out of there. Since then I've been collected random tech and developing new things trying to keep them off my back.'_ Once again Dick really didn't know why he was spilling his life story to some random kid he'd found on the street, but for some reason it just felt right.

There was silence for a few minute, then finally Wally broke it. "My story is now where near as unique as yours, but I grew up in a place called Keystone City, Kansas. I lived with my parents, and to the outside world we looked like the normal happy family. But on the inside that was the farthest thing from the truth. My dad's favorite pass time was beating me with his belt. My mother was always slapping me around and ordering me to do this or that. I had to work for what little food I was aloud. Most nights they would get into an argument about whose fault it was that I was alive. The only good thing in my life had been my aunt and uncle, especially my uncle. One night about two years ago, I decided that I'd had had enough. So after my parents went to bed I snuck out, got some food from the kitchen and some money, then caught a bus headed to Gotham. About eight weeks after I got here I saw a news report from Keystone, my parents got arrested for child abuse and my aunt and uncle had started a search for me."

" _Why didn't you go back after that? I mean your parents got what was coming to them, and you could've been sent to live with your uncle, why stay on the streets?"_ Dick was genuinely curious. Wally could've had a nice, happy, normal life, so why didn't he just go back?

"To be honest I thought about it. A lot. But every time I did something in the back of my head told me that's not what was supposed to happen. That I was in Gotham for a reason and so I stayed. I learned how to survive on the streets. I learned how to take care of myself and how to stay under the radar. And it was the best decision I've ever made. I don't regret not going back and I don't think I ever will. Sure I miss my uncle but, hey, that's life." Neither of them spoke again that night, they just enjoyed the easy silence that encased them. They both knew that things were about to get a lot more complicated for the both of them, but for some reason they were okay with that. Because now, now they weren't alone in the world. And eventually they knew they would show everybody that was against them, that they were still in the game. But that was an adventure for another day.


End file.
